So we have recently launched iContact for Salesforce and we have generated quite a bit of excitement. In addition to the obvious value in combining iContact’s Email Marketing expertise with Salesforce, there are several key benefits of using iContact for Salesforce:

It is very tightly integrated with Salesforce’s campaign functionality which makes it easy to use and quite powerful

You have the high deliverability of iContact working behind the scenes

You can send follow-up emails via the Targeted Sends feature to campaign members based on their interactions with your email marketing.

And the list goes on and on….

But the title of this blog post is “The Real Value”, so I’m sure you are asking yourself – If the list of features and benefits (and there are quite a bit!) isn’t the real value what is? In addition to all the features and the fact that it is from iContact, what makes iContact for Salesforce so special?

The Real Value lies in 3 hidden gems:

The Level of Integration – The most basic level of integration is exporting our list of contacts and leads into a CSV then importing them into your email marketing program. There are a lot of “integrations” out there where this is the recommended practice. Yuck! Some “integrations” provide a website within Salesforce where you can import your contacts into their system. While this is better than a CSV file, it’s not much better. Where is the tracking? Where is the power of Salesforce? Why is there this weird tab with this non-native Salesforce interface? What about my Salesforce templates?iContact for Salesforce is a true integration. Every page is a Salesforce page. No new interfaces, no weird transfer of contacts, leads, messages, etc. All your data resides in Salesforce so you can use Salesforce reports and dashboards. It’s seamless. If you know how to use Salesforce, you know how to use iContact for Salesforce.

The Scalability – Many folks simply “solve” this problem by ignoring it. It’s easy to see why; it’s a very tough problem to solve. The difficulty is that you have two separate systems (Salesforce and your email marketing provider) that have to work together. iContact took a different approach…We tackled it head on! We worked to make sure we can do as much as we can behind the scenes to ensure that all of the data transfer invisible to the user and could easily scale. While not as flashy as all of our other features, our ability to send a large number of emails matters!

The Targeted Send – This is one feature that really takes email marketing to the next level. It allows you to “close the loop” between the interactions of your email recipients and subsequent emails. For example, suppose you send an email out to your other campaign members that contains two special offers. With the Targeted Sends feature you can follow up with folks who selected the first special offer with a thank you email, or better yet, you can reach out to folks who did not even open your email to send them a different offer. Of course, all of this is integrated right into Salesforce (See Real Value #1)

Wow…that was a lot for one blog post. Stay tuned for more about iContact for Salesforce.